Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The Last Of Them All

In this week’s articles: “Writing Roles for Ourselves” and “ Loud on the Inside: Working-Class Girls, Gender, and Literacy” I was shocked and amazed at how I was in agreement with the essays. I had the pleasure of reading first “Writing Roles for Ourselves.” and throughout the essay it depicts a man who discusses his dissertation to become a part of the professional discourse. He had a hard time with his long essay and while he writes it he finds himself felling restricted and as a result he feels that he is no longer a good writer, but when he was able to freelance he felt he was a good writer. In writing, students have always had problems trying to level their writing standards to the system’s writing standard. Many students have anxiety about reading and writing because they are not familiar with academic discourse, according to Bartholomae.

In the essay the author talks about how his dissertation was a hardship to write. He found that in finding his academic identity was not easy and felt as if he was losing himself in his professional writing. These are common problems that most writers have because when writing people feel free to write how they talk and it seems the only way people have broken from this is when teachers break students down to certain standards. With the obstacles he had with his dissertation he empathizes with the student writer and how some expectations teachers immediately have on students should be flexible and then changed.

The author continues with introducing a couple of students and their works. He brought someone extremely important to the teaching community. He sets out to inform that many students use different discourses and in order to distinguish which discourses they use is hard, but that in return we, as teachers, need to find the way literacy affects them. As a teacher he sees himself as understanding how they are able to show accomplishment from their work and to develop better literacy levels.

He speaks of a couple of students, but two in general. As a reader I am able to find that students can be afraid to express themselves in papers for the fact that they are wrong, leading to restrictions on effort and originality and much more focus on structure. He advises the students to keep their voice, but change it a little to have academic understanding. In Celina’s second essay she speaks upon Black English and it is apparent that allowing Black English into school will weaken the standards which will eventually completely change them. Larry’s essay were more about grammatical errors.

Students try to adopt the ways of writing, reading and speaking to be apart of the bigger discourse society mainly because they are ordered to do so. When working one’s self into an academic discourse one has to practice well enough, put itself into that discourse, and develop an identity. In one can belong to a discourse, but discuss against it, shift it, and so on. Discourses can be tricky because it is finding something that on is good at or works on striving to be good at. In discourse a couple of important words come about: self-interest and self-worth.

Self-interest is a key goal in this dissertation tell-all. The author talks about students attaching a façade in certain situations that in order to get help to be a good writer one’s true self should not matter and that self interest can be founded through their writing. A teacher would be able to achieve the importance of one’s writings and how they felt about the essay. It is in the teachers best interest that they find more insight about their students before they grade their paper or pass judgment about their writing.

The author mentions other authors in the article that show me a comparison of how he and myself think. I find his arguments quite compelling. As well as his way to teach. It seems as if he stays to the standards, but he still believes in free writing. The key goal I was able to achieve throughout the essay was that to build an identity through writing that would enable one to claim a sense of accomplishment.

I like the way that he teaches because it seems as if he is passionate about making sure his students are on the right path of being literate. While discussing Celina the author quotes “ so I am not quite ready for the approach she takes in her second essay.” This quote caught me off guard because while admitting this many teachers are not able to. The knowledge that teachers are unsure of how to take approach happens plenty of times, but they are so standardized that they do not teach freely anymore they teach with what they have been told. The author however, did better than this he helped and provided help that many people do not.

In my second article “ Loud on the Inside: Working-Class Girls, Gender, and Literacy” I was able to focus on the fact that it was a female dominace discussion. In the article however it seemed very one-sided. I felt the compelling arugment that females are not be acknowledged in schools as much as males. It discusses the difference of race and gender. The real problem I had was the fact that it seemed more race than gender. Race and gender have always been an issue throughout the world. The take throughout the study I could relate too and maybe because I am a woman.

The article intended to express that people obtain many discourses, but when obtaining them throughout society, there may be different views which may confuse people. Social constructionists have an agreeable way of putting points. I had to disagree that adolescents try to have different discourses. I feel that adolescents try to be like one another in reality they strive to have the same discourses, and with that being said many don’t have rising conflicts.

My most interesting part in the study was the fact of feminist scholars thinking that gender is not determine biologically, but instead identity does. It seems as if to me that we switch gender roles for certain situations.

Las, but not least the study went on to follow these young girls and determine that with all of the books read throughout school, school has a tendency to define who we are. School literature tend to change out prospective of life. The view of “general” life in book roles of men and women shape the society. In result working women feel that they are missing out on the inside when they hide their outside and in fact value literacy more. We position ourselves in situations besides when we are reading however. Since society has women defined we “women” look at the magazines and televisions ads as the “perfect” woman model of life. Literacy ha s a funny way of being what it really is because so many people have different view.

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